Understanding Salat — Page 141
Sajdah 141 think our ego can take us, the lower we end. The lower we take ourselves in humility, the greater the heights we achieve in wisdom. Hadrat Khalīfatul Masīh IV rta said , An ignorant and unintelligent person thinks that loftiness and vastness can be gained by raising his head. However, a person who is familiar with and has learned the secrets of human nature from the Holy Quran is well aware that loftiness is in humility and vastness is in humility. These two subjects are told to us by every Rak‘at of the five daily prayers. …We have bowed down towards loftiness because we have bowed towards the Most Lofty Lord. ( Khu t b ā t-e- Tā hir , vol. 4, pp. 755, 6 Sept 1985) The principle of exaltation through humility is very limited in its secular application. It is nothing more than a mental exercise entirely within ourselves. In spirituality, it takes on the form of a living relationship between our Creator and us; it is an interaction. We don’t just acknowledge our insignifi- cance to ourselves, that is easy, and that is a mental exercise. Rather, we acknowledge our insignificance to our Lord. That acknowledgment is an interaction with Allah Almighty. Narrating his first experience of this, Malcolm X said, Picking a lock to rob someone’s house was the only